Wristcutters: A Love Story.

"On one level, I want to leap to the defense of [Goran] Dukic's wry, lovelorn film, which presents the hereafter reserved for suicides as a gray, trashed and spiritless realm that's just "a little worse" than the world of the living," writes Andrew O'Hehir at Salon. "I feel like I should assure you that [Wristcutters: A Love Story] is life-affirming and morally responsible, that by gosh it's against suicide and doesn't make offing yourself look cool or glamorous. On the other hand, I also think: Screw life-affirming and morally responsible. Dukic is entitled to follow his perverse muse down any dark corridors he wants to, and if we don't believe that all the offensive films glorifying murder have any direct correlation to crime (and I don't), I certainly don't believe that anybody's going to kill themselves because of a low-budget comedy."

Updated through 10/21.

"Adapting [Etgar] Keret's 1998 novella Kneller's Happy Campers, Dukic can't be accused of shying away from or failing to appreciate its morbid theme," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "But he does dilute it." Still, "Keret's metaphor for Israel comes through, as if from afar - the sense of displacement, the uncertain boundaries, the youthful alienation, the crummy beaches, the desert wandering, the military detritus, the Russian immigrants, the magic-realist kibbutz, and the enigmatic bureaucracy, not to mention the cult of the false Messiah King that figures in the final act."

"To the tunes of Eugene's Russian rock band (music provided by NY-based Gogol Bordello), Wristcutters bops blithely along, and it's easy to give in to its grooviness," writes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE. "Ultimately, the trio makes a pit stop at Kneller's Happy Campers, and the community's namesake, played by (who else?) Tom Waits, guides them toward what they've been seeking, and us toward an ending both infuriatingly pat and perfectly fitting."

"The movie has some authentically bittersweet moments, but a sarcastic mentality ruptures its sincerity," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Storytellers have always been interested in the spiritual world, and the genre is best represented by the dreary Dante's Inferno on one end of the spectrum and blithely subversive tales like Nightmare Before Christmas and Grim Fandango on the other. We don't need good fiction to provide us with resolute answers about the afterlife, but it should propose something wholly original. On that front, Wristcutters quickly bleeds itself dry."

"The story's dialogue may be wry, but what should have been a jumping-off point for a lively discussion about the meaning of life is really just a philosophically shallow wasteland," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant.

At IFC News, Matt Singer and Alison Willmore list "10 High-Concept Movie Visions of the Afterlife."

Updates, 10/19: "[W]hen the conceit works, you may wind up with It's a Wonderful Life, Defending Your Life or the various iterations of Heaven Can Wait," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Wristcutters: A Love Story is not quite at that level; it's more likely to live on as a cult favorite than as a consensus classic. But this movie... has an offbeat, absurdist charm that turns a potentially creepy conceit into an odd, touching adventure."

"This might have played like gangbusters in 1996," suggests Bilge Ebiri at Nerve. "[I]n its mixture of lyricism and brutality, and its uneasy balance between surreal plotting and deadly serious subject matter, Dukic's film recalls the boisterous, magical realist Balkan romanticism of Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream, Underground). But it lacks Kuristica's freewheeling energy and visual dazzle."

"Dukic is bitterly funny rather than maudlin, and his carefully plotted grunge chic, in addition to being cheap, lends the film a great deal of Jim Jarmusch grime to go with its unmistakable Jim Jarmusch quirk," writes Tasha Robinson at the AV Club. "[I]t's a surprisingly playful romantic drama, one less about death than about the quiet, necessary grind of living."

IndieWIRE interviews Dukic.

Update, 10/21: Marcy Dermansky finds "enjoyable if aimless ride." Besides: "Seven years after Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit still sports that winning, dorky haircut, bangs flopping over his eyes."

Posted by dwhudson at October 18, 2007 2:44 PM